In recent years, light emitting devices have been proposed each of which includes a light emitting element such as a laser diode (LD) as a light source and projects an illumination light generated by radiating an excitation light output from the light emitting element on a light emitting unit including a phosphor.
For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a light emitting device that includes a semiconductor laser element and a phosphor material adjacent to the semiconductor laser element. In the light emitting device, the phosphor material that has received a laser light of the semiconductor laser material emits a light with a wavelength different from that of the laser light. Patent Literature 1 further discloses that using a single crystal phosphor material enables more stable light emission.